While doing an assignment for college recently, I wandered the streets of Dublin, Galway and Kildare with a microphone asking people whether they thought an eco-friendly Christmas was possible. What I got was an entire range of ideas that I had never thought of, and I think that I will share.

I decided to put up this post in conjunction with my “Why I hate coffee”, post, although this piece is going to be more of an informative piece about different types of tea, and less of an opinion piece. Here, I’ll look at some of the technicalities of tea, and the benefits and downsides (though I don’t think there are any) to drinking it.

Coffee, for me, is never a good idea. I don’t like the taste of it. It’s too strong. I don’t like milk either, so I lace it with sugar. Mistake #1. I also, for whatever strange reason, tend to drink it fast. Mistake #2. And, I only ever ever drink it when I’m stressed out and have a lot of work to do. Does it ever help ? Yeah, that’d be a firm no.

The DSPCA are calling on everyone to get knitting for the animals at the shelter this Christmas season. In a new campaign highlighted at the RDS Stitch and Knit Show, the DSPCA want knitters (and people who can just about hold two needles) to get knitting dog coats and cat toys for their rescue animals.Continue reading →

This is going to be the first post in my series of recipes, for the vegan/vegetarians among you out there. I’m a vegetarian myself, but a lot of the recipes that I make are vegan, so I’ll tag them as such. I’m also a student: an undomesticated one: so don’t expect too much from these. Basically most of my recipes are the fast type of cooking, though if you are vegetarian or vegan and you’re a student, I really recommend making a big dish on a Sunday, and saving it for a few days, throwing it into your lunchbox 😉

With the upcoming US presidential election, there’s no way I can’t focus on the climate change question this week. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, no one can refute that Romney has blatantly ignored the question. Take a look at this recent clip, where a protester at a Romney rally was booed out for suggesting he discuss climate change. The animosity of some Americans in this video is scary.

But despite the fact that Obama’s policies on climate change will clearly best Romney’s, neither candidate brought up the climate change question in the 3 presidential debates. Why is this, we have to wonder?

As far as presidential candidates go, Obama has always been a champion for climate change. After being elected in 2008, Obama stated “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear…Denial is no longer an acceptable response.” Compare this to Romney’s opinion: “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”

Obama’s record, so far, has been pretty good. He’s on track to invest the €150bn he promised to renewable sources of energy. The investment in the energy sector has been strong. Obama is also the first US President to issue a document stating that scientific findings will not be interfered with by the administration, called the Integrity Policy. This document deals with the concerns that scientists had under the Bush administration: that they were not being heard, that their work was being censored, that findings were remaining hidden and going unreported and unpublished.

His policies came under harsh criticism in 2011 when Al Gore attacked him for not leading the public sufficiently in on environmental issues. In Rolling Stone magazine, Gore claimed that Obama had never shown the American public “the magnitude of the climate crisis”. This may be true. Obama’s policies have also often focused on “clean coal” technologies, which have some doubt cast over them.

Obviously Al Gore is currently supporting Obama’s campaign. They are both Democrats, and Obama has been the best President with regards to climate change to date, a matter which Gore has based his career on campaigning for. But Gore is still saying that Obama needs to be stronger in the face of climate change. Superstorm Sandy can only showcase this more clearly.

If it hadn’t been for Superstorm Sandy, would the issue of climate change have come up at all in this election? If the mayor of New York had not put his faith behind Obama, stating that it was expressly because of Obama’s stance on climate change, would the politicians be talking about this issue at all? Why did Obama steer so clear of one of the big features of his policies? One of the clearest differences between his campaign and Romney’s?